Saturday, March 31, 2012

Quantum Spin Plates Update Number 1

Summer break comes to an end depressingly soon, and this
brings with it the first ever QSP Update!

These updates are mostly a way for me to talk about what I’m
working on, show off, and generally keep my various projects straight in my
head. And thus, we have the two categories.

Shiny New Ideas: These are brand new concepts that have just
recently shown up. They usually have a die-off rate of 90-95%, because I have a
lot of ideas and usually write them for a short time, and then let them die. Sometimes,
a SNI sticks and clings like glue!

Unfinished Rough Draft: These are drafts that are rough and
unfinished. If an SNI survives to be 10k words, then it is officially considered
to be a Rogue Draft. These usually have a die-off rate of anywhere from 60-15%,
depending on whether or not it was easy or hard to get to these 10k points.

Note: I have finished drafts that I’m working on, and those
will be covered in later issues of my Updates…and not this update because I was
writing it at 1 in the morning and I’m about to pass out! Enjoy!

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SNI

PSYCH-SQUAD: When Jack Hoole was pulled out of his senior
biology class by two USAF colonels, he thought he was in trouble. Then, after
making him sign an NDA, they explained: For the past ten years, the United
States, Canada, France, Britain, Japan, Germany and the Russian Federation had
been fighting a secret war against a galactic empire of psionic aliens called
the Doyen, utilizing a stolen piece of Doyen technology called the Prometheus
Device to activate psionic powers in latent human beings. Using these psionic
powers, Psyches (as they are called) are able to create telekinetic,
non-newtonian starships called Ego-Ships, as well as produce force fields, read
minds, fold space/time to jump lightyears in a single instant, and project
blasts of raw kinetic energy across kilometers of space.

Whoa.

Jack, being a latent, leaps at the chance for an actual
honest to god adventure. And since the Prometheus Device works best on
developing minds, the Air Force is eager to get him. He finds himself warped to
Antares Station, a space station built in the binary star system Antares, 150
parsecs away from home. With his powers active, Jack meets a multinational
group of other cadets, and learns that while humanity has some advantages over
the Doyen Empire, the war remains an obscenely long shot. Still, if extinction
is looking us in the face, Jack would rather go out swinging…

STATUS: 5k!

PROGRESS REPORT: Moderate to fast when I have the time to
work on it.

THOUGHTS: I keep writing and hope that no one notices it’s a
mashup between Stargate, Trinity and Evangelion.

###

Unfinished Rough Drafts

MERCH: The year is 2011. McCain is President, the Iran war
has just wrapped up, and the global population of Supers has just hit 7,000.
Supers – who appeared on the scene ten years before when Lady Liberty
dramatically stopped the 9/11 attacks – have completely changed the world. They’ve
invented new technologies, ended wars, cleaned up the environment, and in
return, people shower them with fame, attention and money. To be lucky enough
to have a Parnell Cortex, the required mutation to exhibit superpowers of any
kind, is like winning the lottery ten times in a row.

That’s what Jake Vega thought at least. And when his Cortex quickened during a high
school assembly, everything went great. At first. He had superspeed, for one
thing. For another thing, he’s been showered in money, merchandizing, offers
for jobs left and right ranging from acting as a superpowered mercenary for
Blackwater International to being a mascot for a city. In the end, he decides
to front for Marvel’s new comic line.

But…Jake finds out that life as a super isn’t nearly as
heroic as he thought. Oh, the money is good, but there’s little to no catching
muggers, no supervillains to battle. Nothing but a life of shallow fame, easily
earned wealth, and constant paparazzi. A life of being merch.

STATUS: 11k

PROGRESS: Slowed down (Death possibility 65%)

THOUGHTS: I’m not
quite sure how to tell the story of a teenage boy given huge piles of money,
groupies and FREAKING SUPER POWERS being consumed by enuii and depression due
to this…without the main character seeming like a shallow douchebag. Seriously,
just donate your money to charity, damn it!

THE TALE OF KES THE TWISTCATCHER: Forty thousand years in
our future, on a distant farming planet ignored by the galaxy at large, Kes is
the unwanted daughter of a brutal, abusive drunkard. But then, one day,
something new comes to the village. Specifically, something old comes: A man,
who had left the village years hence to seek his fortunes serving aboard
starships. And back he has come, with three missing limbs, a missing eye, a
face scarred by radiation…and a chest full of golden coins. His tales of
adventures alighted her imagination. And so, she ran away from home and came to
her homeworld’s spaceport.

And, almost immediately, she was set on by a press-gang.
Beaten about the head. Shoved onto a shuttle and forced into slavery aboard the
starship Revenge, captained by the
piratical and brutal Lord-Captain Sadronosticus. There, Kes finds herself
apprenticed to Denny Feng-Zhao, a mysterious old man who serves as the Revenge’s Twistcatcher: The officer
responsible for managing and controlling and purging the ship’s population of
mutants.

However, the history of the Revenge is long, and not all is
as it seems…

STATUS: 31K

PROGRESS: Fast when I write it! (Death Possibility 24%)

THOUGHTS: I love this story. Unfortunately, I can’t sell it
to my delightful publishers at Candlemark and Gleam because…it is…a Warhammer
40,000 story. This means it has one and only one home: The mysterious and
foreboding Black Library. Only these people will accept and publish WH40K
stories. So, I guess I will have to toil endlessly at the gates of the Black
Library…in between doing my actual works!

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Between these projects, I'm working on my short stories, editing my finished books, and trying to graduate college.